As part of the U.S. president's reorganization project, in 1976, Dwyer worked on the organization of nutrition research in the federal government.

From 1980 to 1981, she was on the personal staffs of Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) as a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow.

She is also Senior Scientist at the Jean Mayer/USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.

Dwyer directs activities on developing understanding of dietary supplement motivation and use on the part of Americans, and supervises a study involving secondary analyses of several large scale surveys of consumers on their motivations for the use of various dietary supplements.

[1] Dwyer is the author or co-author of more than 200 original research articles and 280 review articles published in scientific journals on topics including preventing diet-related disease in children and adolescents; maximizing quality of life and health in the elderly; and vegetarian and other alternative lifestyles.